


Performance Review

by ReaperWriter



Category: Dead Like Me
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:05:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rube ponders on why he's so tough with George</p>
            </blockquote>





	Performance Review

     Rube knows he’s hard on Georgia L. Lass.  In moments of quiet contemplation, he will even admit that he is harder on her than he is on any of the rest of his team.  He might even admit to himself that he is harder on her than he has ever been on a rookie reaper under his charge.  He knows that Penny has pointed it out to him time and again.  And Penny would be one to know.

     Mason was a fuck-up.  Which didn’t mean he didn’t like Mason, that he didn’t have some modicum of fatherly affection for him.  But Mason rarely ever learned from his mistakes, Mason was too focused on booze, Mason…well, he was Mason.  And then there was Daisy, Daisy Adair, who was so wrapped up in herself, her needs, her wants, she rarely, if ever, thought of anyone but herself.  Wasn’t to say that he was going to cut his loses on her at the first opportunity, the way a lot of her previous foremen had.  He didn’t expect a lot of growth from Daisy, but what he did expect, she was managing.

     And then there was Roxy.  His go to, his right hand.  Roxy did the job, by the book, cut and dried.  She didn’t, as a general rule, get attached to people or things.  He wondered if that had anything to do with her death.  Overall, he’d trust Roxy to get the job done, but never exceed what was expected.

     But Georgia, she was something special.  That first reap, when she tried to bend the rules, to break them, to find the loophole.  She had acted out of fear, to be sure, and anger at the universe, perhaps a desire to give upper management the finger.  But underlying it all, at the core, George had been acting out of her own humanity.  And she did it again and again, every time she tried to tweak the job. 

     And she learned, each time, from the consequences.  She came to understand what they were, really.  That they were a last gift, in the end, a voice and a face and a hand to guide souls through to what’s next.  Sometimes they weren’t souls they necessarily liked, sometimes they were.  But what Georgia had come to understand was that they were necessary, they were needed, and they were important.  That while her fate, while not fair, brought her to do needful things for others.

     And he had watched her grow up.  The first time he had called her Peanut, it had slipped out.  He spent a long night trying to figure out if he was projecting, if he was using her as a replacement for the daughter he didn’t get to see grow up.  Nothing could replace his Rosie.  Ever.  And the feelings he had for George weren’t really paternal.  At points, definitely not paternal.

     There was pride, to be sure, and frustration when she messed up, and maybe something else, something he wasn’t ready to define.  But perhaps what he saw most of all was himself.  Back almost eighty years, freshly undead, pissed off and defiant and hating what he was and what he was being asked to do.  Hating his boss, this brassy broad no higher than his shoulder who was constantly riding him about what the job was, why they did the job, what the point was.  Penny still laughed at him over it.

     So tonight, across the street from the police station, he watched his favorite reaper was loaded into her living boss’s car, looking whipped and forlorn.  Mason had tipped him off about the arrest, and if he hadn’t seen Delores going in as he walked up the street, he would have gone to get her.  However, knowing she had handled it, knowing she was learning from it, he gave a smile and a chuckle, and decided that maybe it was time to stop riding her less and letting her have her freedom more, and see where it took them.  It was a scary thought, but sort of thrilling as well, and while that worried him, he had learned a long time ago to stop fighting the cards fate was dealing him and to let things ride. 

      So he stepped away from the wall and moved back down the street to his truck.  Tomorrow was another ordinary, undead day, and he was looking forward to what it might throw them.


End file.
